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Who shot the sheriff?

Sheriff George W. Bush and Deputy Dick Cheney were spending a working vacation on Sheriff George’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Sheriff George was thinking and deciding and working on his book tentatively entitled “Decision Points.” Deputy Dick was assigned the job of shoveling the manure from the barn. Both men slept in the bunkhouse to be one of the guys. Laura lived and slept in the main ranch house.

One day, Deputy Dick decided to play a joke on his boss. He cut bin Laden’s face from a wanted poster and waited until Sheriff George was sound asleep. Then he pasted bin Laden’s picture on the top of the Sheriff’s right foot. When Sheriff George awoke in the morning, he sat up on the side of the bed, stretched, and then rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Looking down, he saw bin Laden looking at him from beneath the bunk. Sheriff George grabbed his gun from the bedpost and blazed away at bin Laden, hitting him several times in the head. Boy that hurt. For the rest of the day, Sheriff George limped around the ranch leaving bloody footprints, bragging about how he had killed bin Laden. Finally, Nurse Laura persuaded the Sheriff to sit down long enough to be bandaged.

That night, Deputy Dick repeated the prank with a new picture of bin Laden on Sheriff George’s right foot and he added a picture of al-Qaeda’s number two, al-Zawahiri, on Sheriff George’s left foot. The next morning was a virtual repeat of the prior day. Sheriff George stretched and saw both bin Laden and al-Zawahiri peering out from under the bunk. He grabbed his gun and shot both of them repeatedly. Ouch, that really hurt. From a wheelchair, Sheriff George spent much of the day bragging about how he had killed bin Laden twice and al-Zawahiri once.

When he and Deputy Dick were alone later in the day, George confessed that he was embarrassed by shooting himself in the feet. “What will the voters think?” said George.
“Just tell that it was a hunting accident,” said Dick. “It always works.”
“But I wasn’t hunting,” said George.
“Of course you were,” said Dick. “You’re always hunting for members of al-Qaeda.”
“Great idea,” said George. “I’ll see that you receive the Medal of Freedom for that idea.”
“I’d rather get a vacation from the manure detail,” thought Dick to himself.

The lessons of this tale are Deputy Dick does the dirty work. Sheriff George is a good shot and is trigger happy. He does not learn from mistakes and he does not tell the truth.